Program · Access
A recoverable grant to improve access to healthcare.
Open to Belgian health innovations with a validated proof of concept, for the pilot that takes them out of the laboratory.
The first call
Twenty projects applied. Two are running pilots.
- ~20
- Projects applied to the first call, in 2025.
- 6
- Invited to present their project to the jury.
- 2
- Laureates funded: Discovering Hands and Fair Genomics.
- 4
- Other finalists Pulse chose to keep supporting: Mirapulse, Healthentia, SmartBrain and Fluiscope.
- 50.000€
- The most one laureate can be committed, recovered when the pilot succeeds.
How the money moves
One grant, funded twice.
Not a loan and not equity. A venture repays only when it succeeds, and that money funds the next one.
Financière de Tubize funds it
Up to 50.000€ committed to one venture, with Pulse Foundation running the program.
The pilot runs
A time-bound test with real users or healthcare partners, in Belgium, inside six to nine months.
The milestones release it
Twenty to thirty percent at the start, the rest in tranches against the milestones agreed up front.
The venture repays
Only on success, and only when there is capacity: revenue, profit or a fundraise.
The next venture is funded
The same money goes out again. That is what makes the grant recoverable rather than spent.
What it is
Pay it forward, not back.
The grant funds one step: a time-bound pilot in Belgium, with real users or healthcare partners. It is open to projects with a validated proof of concept and to newly incorporated spin-offs. It is not a loan and not equity: a company repays only if it succeeds, and that money funds the next innovator.
Access to healthcare is read broadly: what care costs, geographic and cultural barriers, digital tools and health literacy, prevention and self-management, and the reimbursement and navigation paths patients and providers have to get through.
The same grant runs in the United Kingdom, operated there by Oxford University Innovation through its ImpactU platform, so both ecosystems share what they learn.
Why Pulse runs this
Money alone rarely moves a project from promising to real.
Health ventures with a working proof of concept stall in the gap between the laboratory and a real-world pilot. An ordinary grant pays for the work and ends there, and the money is spent once.
So this one is recoverable. When a venture succeeds it repays, and that capital funds the next founder. Pulse innovates in its impact models, and this one has a name: regenerative philanthropy. It exists to test whether private money can activate an ecosystem instead of spending itself, and whether the same engine could later move to other sectors.
Its partners
Who funds it.
The work
What the support actually looks like.
Next step
Improving access to healthcare?
The eligibility criteria, the application form and the state of the current round are on the grant's own site.
